Friday, 19 November 2010

Standing in the shower, this is what you see. I was going to strip the door (which is the original one from the old bathroom) but I got half way through before realizing that its condition was extremely poor with lots of holes full of Polyfilla, so I filled, smoothed and painted it thus. A splash of colour is just the job. This room is now a whisker away from being finished, although I will have to refinish the top of the wash stand once the other bathroom is back in commission.

Tuesday, 16 November 2010

Having now finished the wardrobes, my priorities suddenly switched back to the en-suite (having originally planned to do the floor in the undressing room).

The reason for this was that I discovered a pesky leak in the corner of the shower. This shower door cost a fortune and has been nothing but trouble. Its design is so unnecessarily complex that no matter how hard I try, water always seems to manage to find a way through eventually. Here, it was getting behind the door pivot and leaking through a crack in the grout behind, so I had to rip out the whole side. That's the second time I've had to do that, and I bally well intend not to have to bally well do it again. I also scraped out all the grout all the way around the bottom and started again with the best quality sanitary silicone money can buy.

I also got on with finishing all the skirting, one of those jobs which I always seem to take forever to get around to. That results in a particularly warm glow of satisfaction when I finally do. I had to pull the khazi out to get at it, and I've thoughtfully blotted out the end of the soil pipe in case you are just having your breakfast.

The end piece was carefully cut by hand and glued together.

I cut a small piece of stone tile to fit between the skirting and the shower tray. When all the gaps were variously siliconed, grouted and caulked, it looked pretty tidy. I also had a small fillet to do on the other side to finish off that corner. Every possible gap is now permanently sealed. Now there's a bold statement if ever there was one.

When we bought this house in 2002, we spent all our budget on space. The house was perfectly habitable, but we knew there was lots of work to do. Insulation, modernization, restoration, and lots of other "ations." We might have thought twice if we'd known just what we were taking on....